The prior art includes a number of different conveyor systems for receiving soiled laundry articles sorted thereonto by hand and for delivering such items to separate hampers whose items are then delivered to appropriate washing machines. Machines of this type are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,139,965 to Eggert, 3,327,942 to Blume, 3,415,372 to Drace and 3,550,772 to Melvin. Of these references, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,139,965 and 3,327,942 show apparatus which is very spread-out and occupies a very large amount of floor space considering the fact that each machine sorts the laundry into only three conveyor runs and therefore only three hampers. Sorting into such a small number of classifications would not be of much practical use in a commercial laundry. U.S. Pat. No. 3,550,772 does not provide conveyor-type sorting, but instead employs hand sorting into circular bins whose bottoms can subsequently open at a time onto an adjustable-position conveyor which transports the contents of each bin, one at a time, into hamper trucks as the operator may direct. Failure to sort directly onto separate conveyors deprives the machine of accurate single-piece counting and severely limits its utility. U.S. Pat. No. 3,415,372 provides for manual sorting from an input conveyor directly onto multiple output conveyors which count items and discharges them directly into hampers. It is therefore of the general type on which the present invention seeks to improve.